10 ms·

NSA revelations of privacy breaches 'tip of the iceberg' according to Senators

121 points by sinak 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rdtsc 13y ago
> "The executive branch has now confirmed that the rules, regulations and court-imposed standards for protecting the privacy of Americans' have been violated thousands of times each year," And you can bet that if they admitted to those, the real violations are orders of magnitude worse. Nothing coming out from either the White House or NSA or other secret agencies will be taken seriously anymore. Whatever they release and say, at least in the next year or so related to the spying, is just going to be regarded as more PR and lies. They have completely lost any credibility. Now the bad part -- this doesn't seem to bother them. That bill to defund the NSA was close but not close enough to scare them. Now, what could happen as a nasty side effect is they notice our apathy it will just embolden them. Anyone notice any promises of them shutting down their operation? Nope. Neither have I. But one can bet they will ramp them up. This is like the tiny criminal that when he finds out everyone knows about his crimes but nothing really comes out of it either through apathy or fear, they just ramp up the intensity. "We record %2 percent of traffic and there wasn't that much outrage, why don't we just record 20%".
- 001sky 13y ago
  There use to be a rule that for each letter a congressman got, 100 of his constituents were thinking the same thing. So seeing the <NSA> admit to a mistake rounded down by ~ an order of magnitude is probably a decent guess (!).
losethos 13y ago
C:\TAD\Text\HUCKFINN.TXT s dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says: "Where's the butter?" "I laid out a hunk of it," I says, "on a piece of a corn-pone." "Well, you LEFT it laid out, then--it ain't here." "We can get along without it," I says. "We can get along WITH it, too," he says; "just you slide down cellar and fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to
D9u 13y ago
NSA is not collecting the email and telephone traffic of all Americans How can we be certain? Especially since we've been lied to on more than one occasion.
- computer 13y ago
  FYI, in surveillance context the NSA/US government define "collect" as "look at"/"analyze", not as "store".
  - hellrich 13y ago
    Doublepluscorrectspeak
leokun 13y ago
My biggest personal problem with what the NSA is doing is that they find it OK to store any data, and are only applying the laws on queries. If you look at the violations, some are typos performed on searches. If the NSA never stored the data about Americans in the first place an overly broad typo in a search box wouldn't be an issue. I would like the law to include protection against having our information stored, not just viewed. And I also want protections for non-Americans that aren't legitimate targets. Why is nobody talking about not storing the information or the moral violations, if not legal violations, of collecting private data of innocent people who are not citizens?
- smsm42 13y ago
  Now add to this the fact that NSA shares information with DEA and IRS (at least, that is what is known, who knows what else exists), and both are trained to lie about where the information comes from as a matter of routine, and that information, as any other, once shared can not be unshared - and you have a nice unregulated channel here. NSA analyst makes a "typo" and finds information on John Doe that, say, IRS wants. He then "mistakenly overshares" this information. Once it is detected, NSA instructs IRS to immediately forget the information, which they happily agree to do, though miraculously it turns out they've got exactly the same information by other, confidential, channel. Thus, no abuse of NSA facility ever happened, and IRS can continue with the investigation using this information - and no warrants or probably causes ever required.
adventured 13y ago
Maybe this sounds out here - given the history of the US government I don't think so - I fear for Wyden's safety. He keeps sticking his neck out there over and over again, pushing back against the intelligence system. It's an exceptionally powerful and threatening system, with a massive budget and influence (for example, lucrative CIA and NSA contracts can get very powerful and intelligent people, such as Larry Ellison, to talk completely insane gibberish about how Amex has tons of info on people and we should be more concerned about voluntary transactions than the NSA spying on us by force).
- northwest 13y ago
  > I fear for Wyden's safety. Even if this was an issue - There is no point in living an oppressed life. Maybe it's time we start making sacrifices now so the future will be better and we don't leave our kids in an even bigger mess. Keep in mind, we've already shown that we're OK with messing up the planet for future generations: We haven't taken any serious measures against - climate change, - overpopulation (this is 1 "meta" problem which reinforces most others), - wealth inequality (poverty is now "the new normal"), - pollution, - etc.
  - gte910h 13y ago
    >We haven't taken any serious measures against We have actually: People the world over are having far far fewer children. Almost all developed countries have < replacement rate population growth, and many developing countries are below that level as well Turns out when given the option, women don't want 203948 kids.
- aaronbrethorst 13y ago
  > Maybe this sounds out here It does. Please name the last time the US government assassinated a federal-level elected official. (And "Kennedy" doesn't count as an answer).
  - dredmorbius 13y ago
    Paul Wellstone, Mel Carnahan, and Jerry Litton come to mind, as possibilities. For the equal-opportunity crowd, there's Richard Obenshain and Ted Stevens on the right, as well as Barbara Olson (married to White House counsel, Ted Olson) who died in 9/11 on Flight 77 as it crashed into the Pentagon.
northwest 13y ago
Anybody with an IQ over 80 who's read the recent news about the mass surveillance in place had to reasonably assume that these privacy breaches are just 'the tip of the iceberg'. The only new thing here is that 2 senators seem to have the balls to talk about it. Besides that, nobody should trust Congress to resolve the real issues. Of course they'll try to sell this illusion to us, but the minds are already too corrupted.
tomelders 13y ago
Hang on a second, does this mean its ok to break the law "by accident" now? Because it sure looks that way to me. It looks like its now ok to go to great pains to make something really sophisticated that will undoubtedly break the law if used as is intended, and then "accidentally" use it as intended. I hope everyone involved in this around the world realise they will go down in the history as the bad guys.

121 points by sinak 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rdtsc 13y ago

> "The executive branch has now confirmed that the rules, regulations and court-imposed standards for protecting the privacy of Americans' have been violated thousands of times each year," And you can bet that if they admitted to those, the real violations are orders of magnitude worse. Nothing coming out from either the White House or NSA or other secret agencies will be taken seriously anymore. Whatever they release and say, at least in the next year or so related to the spying, is just going to be regarded as more PR and lies. They have completely lost any credibility. Now the bad part -- this doesn't seem to bother them. That bill to defund the NSA was close but not close enough to scare them. Now, what could happen as a nasty side effect is they notice our apathy it will just embolden them. Anyone notice any promises of them shutting down their operation? Nope. Neither have I. But one can bet they will ramp them up. This is like the tiny criminal that when he finds out everyone knows about his crimes but nothing really comes out of it either through apathy or fear, they just ramp up the intensity. "We record %2 percent of traffic and there wasn't that much outrage, why don't we just record 20%".

001sky 13y ago
There use to be a rule that for each letter a congressman got, 100 of his constituents were thinking the same thing. So seeing the <NSA> admit to a mistake rounded down by ~ an order of magnitude is probably a decent guess (!).

losethos 13y ago

C:\TAD\Text\HUCKFINN.TXT s dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says: "Where's the butter?" "I laid out a hunk of it," I says, "on a piece of a corn-pone." "Well, you LEFT it laid out, then--it ain't here." "We can get along without it," I says. "We can get along WITH it, too," he says; "just you slide down cellar and fetch it. And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to

D9u 13y ago

NSA is not collecting the email and telephone traffic of all Americans How can we be certain? Especially since we've been lied to on more than one occasion.

computer 13y ago
FYI, in surveillance context the NSA/US government define "collect" as "look at"/"analyze", not as "store".
- hellrich 13y ago
  Doublepluscorrectspeak

leokun 13y ago

My biggest personal problem with what the NSA is doing is that they find it OK to store any data, and are only applying the laws on queries. If you look at the violations, some are typos performed on searches. If the NSA never stored the data about Americans in the first place an overly broad typo in a search box wouldn't be an issue. I would like the law to include protection against having our information stored, not just viewed. And I also want protections for non-Americans that aren't legitimate targets. Why is nobody talking about not storing the information or the moral violations, if not legal violations, of collecting private data of innocent people who are not citizens?

smsm42 13y ago
Now add to this the fact that NSA shares information with DEA and IRS (at least, that is what is known, who knows what else exists), and both are trained to lie about where the information comes from as a matter of routine, and that information, as any other, once shared can not be unshared - and you have a nice unregulated channel here. NSA analyst makes a "typo" and finds information on John Doe that, say, IRS wants. He then "mistakenly overshares" this information. Once it is detected, NSA instructs IRS to immediately forget the information, which they happily agree to do, though miraculously it turns out they've got exactly the same information by other, confidential, channel. Thus, no abuse of NSA facility ever happened, and IRS can continue with the investigation using this information - and no warrants or probably causes ever required.

adventured 13y ago

Maybe this sounds out here - given the history of the US government I don't think so - I fear for Wyden's safety. He keeps sticking his neck out there over and over again, pushing back against the intelligence system. It's an exceptionally powerful and threatening system, with a massive budget and influence (for example, lucrative CIA and NSA contracts can get very powerful and intelligent people, such as Larry Ellison, to talk completely insane gibberish about how Amex has tons of info on people and we should be more concerned about voluntary transactions than the NSA spying on us by force).

northwest 13y ago
> I fear for Wyden's safety. Even if this was an issue - There is no point in living an oppressed life. Maybe it's time we start making sacrifices now so the future will be better and we don't leave our kids in an even bigger mess. Keep in mind, we've already shown that we're OK with messing up the planet for future generations: We haven't taken any serious measures against - climate change, - overpopulation (this is 1 "meta" problem which reinforces most others), - wealth inequality (poverty is now "the new normal"), - pollution, - etc.
- gte910h 13y ago
  >We haven't taken any serious measures against We have actually: People the world over are having far far fewer children. Almost all developed countries have < replacement rate population growth, and many developing countries are below that level as well Turns out when given the option, women don't want 203948 kids.
aaronbrethorst 13y ago
> Maybe this sounds out here It does. Please name the last time the US government assassinated a federal-level elected official. (And "Kennedy" doesn't count as an answer).
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  Paul Wellstone, Mel Carnahan, and Jerry Litton come to mind, as possibilities. For the equal-opportunity crowd, there's Richard Obenshain and Ted Stevens on the right, as well as Barbara Olson (married to White House counsel, Ted Olson) who died in 9/11 on Flight 77 as it crashed into the Pentagon.

northwest 13y ago

Anybody with an IQ over 80 who's read the recent news about the mass surveillance in place had to reasonably assume that these privacy breaches are just 'the tip of the iceberg'. The only new thing here is that 2 senators seem to have the balls to talk about it. Besides that, nobody should trust Congress to resolve the real issues. Of course they'll try to sell this illusion to us, but the minds are already too corrupted.

tomelders 13y ago

Hang on a second, does this mean its ok to break the law "by accident" now? Because it sure looks that way to me. It looks like its now ok to go to great pains to make something really sophisticated that will undoubtedly break the law if used as is intended, and then "accidentally" use it as intended. I hope everyone involved in this around the world realise they will go down in the history as the bad guys.